BCL::Commons™, part of the BioChemical Library (BCL) Project, is an open-source, object-oriented C++ library for simulating biological molecules, including proteins, peptides, and small therapeutics. Developed by Vanderbilt University’s Meiler Lab, it offers advanced computational tools to evaluate molecular energies in natural environments, driving breakthroughs in structural biology, cheminformatics, and computational drug discovery.
Key features include:
- Protein structure prediction from sparse experimental data (e.g., cryo-EM, NMR, EPR).
- BCL::MolAlign for small molecule alignment, surpassing tools like MOE and ROCS in pose recovery.
- Fragment-based pharmacophore modeling and virtual high-throughput screening.
- Density map fitting and neural network-based scoring for molecular design.
With its modular, extensible architecture, BCL::Commons supports efficient workflows for de novo protein folding, loop construction, membrane protein modeling, and ligand optimization—enabling research in antibody-antigen analysis, HIV-1 protease inhibitor design, and TIM barrel engineering. As part of the RosettaCommons community, BCL::Commons is led by Prof. Jens Meiler (Vanderbilt University and University of Leipzig) and a collaborative team advancing fused computational and experimental approaches. Learn more at servers.meilerlab.org.
Licensing BCL::Commons: The Academic License is available free for non-commercial use at non-profit institutions via meilerlab.org. Commercial users can request a tailored license quote through our Licensing Options page.